Graham v. Connor

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Graham v. Connor

Argued February 21, 1989
Decided May 15, 1989

Full case name:	Graham v. Connor et al.

Citations:	490 U.S. 386

Holding

Court membership

Chief Justice: William Rehnquist
Associate Justices: William J. Brennan, Jr., Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy

Case opinions

Majority by: Rehnquist
Joined by: White, Stevens, O'Connor, Scalia and Kennedy
Concurrence by: Blackmun
Joined by: Brennan and Marshall

Laws applied

Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Section 1 of the "Ku Klux Act" of April 20, 1871

Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989) was a case decided by the United States Supreme Court, in which the court determined that an objective reasonableness standard should apply to a free citizen's claim that law enforcement officials used excessive force in the course of making an arrest, investigatory stop, or other "seizure" of his person.

This case also established the doctrine that the judiciary may not use the Due Process Clause instead of an applicable specific constitutional provision:

"Because the Fourth Amendment provides an explicit textual source of constitutional protection against this sort of physically intrusive governmental conduct, that Amendment, not the more generalized notion of 'substantive due process,' must be the guide for analyzing these claims."